1983

1983 was the second year of the 1980s and the 1983rd year of the Common Era.

Events
1977
 * Arrest and extradition of Klaus Barbie to France, where he is held as a war criminal for World War II, despite helping to bring down Che Guevara.
 * United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon is bombed, killing 63 people. 271 people are killed when the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) bombs the US Marine Corps headquarters in the city as well. The United States signs an alliance treaty with Israel to intervene in Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War, which pits the forces of Israel and the Christian Kataeb Party against the forces of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Arab Islamist forces in the country.
 * The United States invades Grenada in Operation Urgent Fury after the killing of President Maurice Bishop, and hopes to stop Cuba from gaining hegemony over the small Caribbean island. The war on Grenada is another example of US President Ronald Reagan's pursuit of foreign policy, but winding up in making foreign affairs.
 * The United States begins to sell weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, with Colonel Oliver North authorizing arms deals with the forces of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The goal of the arms sales are to establish friendlier relations with Iran so as to coerce Iran to release the remaining hostages held in Tehran as well as to gain funds, which were to be given to funding the Contras in Nicaragua, who were fighting the Sandinistas government during the Nicaraguan Civil War.
 * Sri Lankan Civil War begins between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, Tamil Tigers) and the government of Sri Lanka. The Hindu Tamil majority of the north of Sri Lanka go up in arms against the Buddhist-dominated Sinhalese government, and a civil war rages until the last of the LTTE are defeated in 2009.
 * Soviet radio controller Stanislav Petrov detects warnings of missile launches from the Western Allies against the Soviet Union, but dismisses them as false alarms, saving the world from World War III. The real cause of the false alarms are balloons that are released into the atmosphere.